Ireland debt crisis: TV resignation hoax causes further anguish

Irish health minister Mary Harney after being pelted with red paint at a protest over health-service cuts earlier this month. False rumours of her resignation were started by a TV comedy show outside the Irish parliament. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Wednesday 17 November 2010 10.57 EST
First published on Wednesday 17 November 2010 10.57 EST

A prankster posing as an Irish television reporter nearly precipitated a crisis inside the embattled Irish coalition government today.

As members of the Dáil filed into parliament in Dublin's Kildare Street this morning, someone holding an RTE microphone asked them what they thought about the resignation of Irish health minister Mary Harney.

Rumours then started to spread that Harney, a senior member of the Irish government, had resigned due to personal reasons and was leaving politics. Her alleged departure would have reduced the current Fianna Fáil/Green coalition's majority to just two inside the Dáil.

At one stage in the morning, representatives of the opposition Fine Gael party were asking reporters if they had heard reports that Harney was about to walk away from the government.

It later transpired, according to parties in the Dáil, that the "reporter" was working for the RTE comedy show Republic of Telly, which often plays hoaxes on the Irish public.

However, this particular hoax has now sparked an internal row within RTE, the Guardian has learned: the station's political correspondent, David McCullagh, has made a formal complaint to RTE about the prank, which provoked considerable anger from the main political parties.